"Slavery wasn't racist, it was economic!" says GOP lawmaker

[Chestaan]

Hmmm well I do believe that racism was formented in order to allow slavery to take place. Would the scumbag elites have enslaved white people if they could have? Probably, but they would never get away with it. Much easier to other some group and enslave them instead.

But yeah the guy that said this seems like an idiot.

[Iridencia]

...

Guys...

Have we forgotten that 2 things can be true at the same time?

Is that why we only have the Democrats and Republicans now?

We forgot you don't have choose between 2 not-necessarily mutually exclusive options?

...Guys?

We read what you said, we just weren't interested in the threadjack.

[Geneviev]

This is about slavery in America, which was definitely racist.

Racism and Slavery have nothing to do with each other. However, you have to remember African People were considered 3/5s a person whether they were freed or not. Hell Native American who owned slaves, by the way, was also not considered people either.

No, only slaves were considered 3/5. Also, slaves were not white or Native American.

[Iridencia]

Would the scumbag elites have enslaved white people if they could have? Probably, but they would never get away with it. Much easier to other some group and enslave them instead.

Hit the nail on the mark. If all you really want it just free labor and don't care what the labor looks like, then the people you captured are not going to be coincedentaly all-brown. If anything, the more economic solution would be to enslave people closer to you, since it cuts down on the expense and hassle of travel and transport.

It's really quite simple: "I don't want to do this work, and I don't want to pay someone to do it. Should I force my neighbor to do it? No, that would be wrong, he's a person after all. I know! I'll just get some non-human people to do it! Easy-peasy!" I don't know how someone can look at that mentality and be like, "But where is the racism?!"

[Holy Tedalonia]

In a sense the titles statements not wrong, but if you include the context. US slavery, yeah, plenty of racist.

[Klorgia1]

Be crazy if it was economic and Racist, or maybe the Racism was part of the wider agenda creates through generations. Or it existed in part because of the Economics, but it still had its own existence, or....

[Iridencia]

In a sense the titles statements not wrong, but if you include the context. US slavery, yeah, plenty of racist.

That's typically the song and dance of these types, rely heavily on strict technicalities and pretend context doesn't exist so you can have your slaves and not be racist too.

[Vetalia]

Indeed. The most anti-slave measure would have been to not count them as people at all, as it would have reduced the South's electoral votes and representation in Congress.

You have it backwards. Slaves were considered property, not people. The South didn't lose House representation when the three-fifths compromise passed; they gained more seats. Unfairly so, in fact, given that slaves couldn't vote.

The alternative would have been a lot worse, though as this compromise was necessary for adoption of the Constitution. At that time the North was weaker than the South without the manufacturing and agricultural base it developed in the decades leading up to the Civil War, so an independent Southern slaveholding nation would have been a major threat.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

It was racist and economic.

No need to excuse the one with the other.

Pretty much. It was both. Racist and economic.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

What an idiot.

[Thermodolia]

Sounds like a cunt

[Fartsniffage]

Sounds like a cunt

Well he's a Republican official....

[Aclion]

Also Horn was right. Slavery was entirely economic, and seen as such until around the 1820-30. It wasn't until then that it transformed into "a positive good" that " civilized and so improved[the black race], not only physically, but morally and intellectually"

Correct — before that, the attitude was just straight up, "they're basically animals and we are entitled to enslave them." i.e., Racist.

An institution that is "entirely economic" does not happen to coincidentally only victimize non-white people. Or are you under the impression that sailing all the way to Africa and the Americas was somehow easier and cheaper than just grabbing some peasant from your white homeland and enslaving him?

No, that was afterward. before it was basically, "Slavery is an unfortunate colonial institution which violates the divine law that all men are created equal(people forget that abolition was largely a religious movement), it should be abolished but we don't really have a practical way of doing so." It wasn't until people like Calhoun(the guy who authored the speech I pulled from) started gaining more influence among what would be the Democrats then Jefferson had that it shifted. but what's important here is that racism was born out of slavery, not the other way around.

Would the scumbag elites have enslaved white people if they could have? Probably, but they would never get away with it. Much easier to other some group and enslave them instead.

Hit the nail on the mark. If all you really want it just free labor and don't care what the labor looks like, then the people you captured are not going to be coincedentaly all-brown.

Unless of course the people are all coming form a single region that is selling POWs as slaves in exchange for european goods(mostly firearms) which in turn can be bought using agriculrural products produced by slaves... you know, like the slavery that actually happened(because it wasn't a bunch of white guys going to Africa with nets).

If anything, the more economic solution would be to enslave people closer to you, since it cuts down on the expense and hassle of travel and transport.

They actually did try that. They'd enslave american Indians. But it wasn't very practical, since they had an easy time escaping back into the native population, so it never became common like African slavery did once the African slave trade developed. The exception to that being the Caribbean, where natives were enslaved wholesale.

[Ethel mermania]

I mean have you guys ever had some nice loose-leaf chaw?

Move to Connecticut.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect ... de_tobacco

[Iridencia]

Correct — before that, the attitude was just straight up, "they're basically animals and we are entitled to enslave them." i.e., Racist.

An institution that is "entirely economic" does not happen to coincidentally only victimize non-white people. Or are you under the impression that sailing all the way to Africa and the Americas was somehow easier and cheaper than just grabbing some peasant from your white homeland and enslaving him?

No, that was afterward. before it was basically, "Slavery is an unfortunate colonial institution which violates the divine law that all men are created equal(people forget that abolition was largely a religious movement), it should be abolished but we don't really have a practical way of doing so." It wasn't until people like Calhoun(the guy who authored the speech I pulled from) started gaining more influence among what would be the Democrats then Jefferson had that it shifted. but what's important here is that racism was born out of slavery, not the other way around.

You're fastforwarding way too early. We're not talking about retrospective analysis of American slavery, we're talking about the origins and extant of it. When Europeans sailed to Africa to buy and/or capture black people for slaves and then continued to forcibly breed them with each other in America for the sake of having more black people to make into more slaves, ain't none of them were holding their wrist to their forehead and going, "Oh, woe is me! How unfortunate that I have been forced into this troublesome situation!"

[Loben The 2nd]

Yes, and those slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person in the US. It was racist there.

But the racism was a result and justification for slavery. Racism doesn't just come from nowhere. It's not natural.

neither is spray tans.

[Aclion]

When Europeans sailed to Africa to buy and/or capture black people for slaves and then continued to forcibly breed them with each other in America for the sake of having more black people to make into more slaves, ain't none of them were holding their wrist to their forehead and going, "Oh, woe is me! How unfortunate that I have been forced into this troublesome situation!"

That's literally the background for Amazing Grace....

Except Slavery has nothing to do with Racism. Both are horrible don't misunderstand me but you have to remember Africa Kingdoms sold their POWs as slaves.

Yes, and those slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person in the US. It was racist there.

Actually slaves counted as 3/5th on a person as a comprimise between abolitionists, who realized that if they counted as a full person slave states would roflstomp free states in federal elections and wanted them to not count at all and slave owners who wanted them to count as a full person, since doing so would give them more electoral power even though slaves couldn't vote.

[Russoslava]

How about, Screw Racism and Screw Slavery. Both are absolutely horrible things that humans do to each other and there is no justification for their existence in any way, shape or form.

[Iridencia]

Unless of course the people are all coming form a single region that is selling POWs as slaves in exchange for european goods(mostly firearms) which in turn can be bought using agriculrural products produced by slaves... you know, like the slavery that actually happened(because it wasn't a bunch of white guys going to Africa with nets).

Yeah, they bought Africans from other Africans. And this proves that they didn't feel justified in enslaving those people based on race, how?

They actually did try that. They'd enslave american Indians.

Psssst... I'll let you in on a little secret, come closer...

American Indians aren't white either.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

But the racism was a result and justification for slavery. Racism doesn't just come from nowhere. It's not natural.

neither is spray tans.

No one is orange colore- *remembers* wait, never mind. Carry on.

[Cedoria]

New Hampshire lawmaker deletes post, clarifies after saying 'owning slaves doesn't make you racist'

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/453932-new-hampshire-lawmaker-deletes-post-clarifies-after-saying

A Republican state representative from New Hampshire, is under fire for a since-deleted post in which he wrote that “owning slaves doesn’t make you racist.”

Werner Horn had made the comment on Facebook in response to a post shared by former state Rep. Dan Hynes (R) in which he bashed HuffPost for a story about a historian who said President Trump is tied with former President Andrew Johnson as the “most racist president in American history.”

“LOL. This is why no one believe the media (huffpo),” Hynes wrote. “Trump is the most racist president in American history, what does that say about all of the other presidents who owned slaves.”

Horn wrote in a since-deleted response: “Wait, owning slaves doesn’t make you racist…”

Horn later told HuffPost in an interview released on Thursday that he was being sarcastic in his response and said that his comment is by no means to be construed as “support for either slavery or racism.”

But in a follow-up statement, Horn said that although it is “never OK to own another person,” he feels that labelling the institution of slavery “is a false narrative.”

Horn argued in the interview that slave owners were making a “an economic decision” when purchasing slaves — a decision, he told the publication, that race did not play a deciding factor in.

“Unless you’re going to try to tell me those plantation owners were so in the dark ages that they delighted in being also sexist and ageist — practicing age discrimination and sex discrimination when they bought slaves — I don’t see how you can say they’re being racist because they bought black slaves,” he continued.

“My comment specifically was aimed at a period of time when that was how you survived, that’s how you fed your family,” the lawmaker went on. “It wasn’t ‘I want to own a black person today.’ It was, ‘I need to feed my family; I need five guys who can work stupidly long hours in the sun without killing themselves.' ”

During the interview, Horn was also pressed about his thoughts on a recent controversy ensnarling the president after he told four Democratic congresswomen of color — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) – to "go back" to their where they came from.

In his response, Horn said he thought the president’s comments were “rude” and “inaccurate” but broke from other lawmakers who described the remarks as “racist.”

We've hit peak, "I'm not racist BUT..." levels here.

If I play devil's advocate (and play damn hard), I suppose I could see what Horn was trying to get at, but even that generous assumption still reveals an disgustingly unforgivable ignorance about history. He's essentially saying that because slaveowners didn't own slaves out of pure sadism and instead had some money-making interests in mind, that means that slave-owning was purely monetarily driven and therefore not racist at all, completely ignoring everything we know about how slavery in the Americas got started, how it was justified, how even many anti-slave people felt about black people, etc. 'Cuz if you don't know, there's a reason that none of those "purely economically motivated" slaves were white. (And no, the Irish were never slaves, sorry that conservative facebook meme lied to you.)

As small an incident as this may be, I believe it is emblematic of larger disturbing trends going on in America, namely the increasingly elaborate mental gymnastics of mainstream right-wingers to sympathize with horrific traditions and practices without having to suffer the label of a bigot. And, of course, continuing to cling to the notion that the south was somehow an innocent victim in the Civil War.

What says you?

If slavery wasn't racist in the US, why was it only blacks that were enslaved? Surely at times it would've been more economical to enslave your fellow European colonists rather than shipped prisoners from Africa? There must've been at least some cases where that would've been true.

Horn is, to put it bluntly, an idiot. The Romans might have had that excuse. His plantation running ancestors (because who really wants to bet they weren't?) almost certainly do not.

Nutcase.

[Cedoria]

But racism and slavery aren't inherently connected: a white person can subjugate another white person to slavery. Anyone could enslave someone else. Racism and slavery are separate, terrible ideas. The only reason they are connected in the American mind is that American philosophical thought realized slavery was wrong and needed a way to justify it. The nature of the slave trade meant racism was a natural answer, and here we are.

In the US though, those two things WERE inherently connected. That's not true of every slaveholder society in history, but it does happen to be true about that one in particular, as slavery in the Americas was explicitly race-based.

[Purgatio]

He's not wrong though. He's just saying not everyone who owned slave harboured a deep and abiding hatred for African people on account of the colour of their skin. Sub-Sahara Africa was an available market for slaves simply because coastal kingdoms were selling off captured individuals (often in war) as property, European traders bought those individuals and transported them to locations with labour-intensive resources such as the French West Indies and the cotton-rich American South. A strong argument can be made that the motivations behind slavery were entirely the product of commercial availability, historical accident and a desire to profit off labour-intensive resources.

This obviously doesn't mean slavery was okay, and that isn't what this lawmaker is saying, slavery is still morally-reprehensible regardless of the motivation behind it. But was every single slaveowner racist or did it because they hated black people? Probably not, the overriding motive was to pursue profit and economic. Again, I don't see why people are taking offence. If he had said slavery was good or not immoral that would be a different thing altogether.

[Aclion]

Unless of course the people are all coming form a single region that is selling POWs as slaves in exchange for european goods(mostly firearms) which in turn can be bought using agriculrural products produced by slaves... you know, like the slavery that actually happened(because it wasn't a bunch of white guys going to Africa with nets).

Yeah, they bought Africans from other Africans. And this proves that they didn't feel justified in enslaving those people based on race, how?

Because they weren't seeking out any particular race. They would enslave basically anyone they could. Looking at European slavery they were doing it to Africans, Native Americans, Asians, Pacific islanders and yes, other Europeans. Why did African slavery win out in the Americas? Economics: they were cheap, there was already an institution in place selling them and they could be bought in (indirect) exchange for goods that slave states were able to produce, cotton, tobacco and sugarcane.

This obviously doesn't mean slavery was okay, and that isn't what this lawmaker is saying, slavery is still morally-reprehensible regardless of the motivation behind it.

I think a lot of people are missing this.

Like this guy ↓

[Cedoria]

Slavery was both racist and economic, and shouldn't be defended.

Except Slavery has nothing to do with Racism. Both are horrible don't misunderstand me but you have to remember Africa Kingdoms sold their POWs as slaves.

The classic 'It wasn't so bad because other people contributed to it as well' argument. I was wondering when it would pop in.

Still just as stupid as it was the first time someone said it.